Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday February 15, 2012 @11:07PM
from the best-of-the-worst dept.

First time accepted submitter srs5694 writes "In light of the recent flood of stories about abysmal labor practices at Foxconn and other Chinese factories that produce most of the tech products we consume, the question arises: Who makes motherboards, plug-in cards, cell phones, and other devices WITHOUT relying on labor practices that are just one rung above slave labor? If I want to buy a new tech gadget, from whom can I buy it without ethical qualms?"

Probably no one these days. Either components, or parts are made in china in some form or another. Even down to the base layer PCB. Though it's getting even worse than that, China is getting too "expensive" to operate in. And they're moving out to other 3rd world countries.

There is a game about this, they show how every step of the process is horrible. You can get it on http://www.phonestory.org/ [phonestory.org], they have both Android and iPhone versions (you can't get the iPhone version anymore as Apple banned it for, amongst other reasons "15.2 Apps that depict violence or abuse of children will be rejected "). Also, no it isn't ironic that it's made for disposable phones as that's exactly the public they want to reach.

It goes a lot deeper than just the components. It goes down to the minerals and metals that make up those components:

The hard part though for raw materials like coltan is that stuff is recycled a LOT. A lot is mined, but these days, a lot is recycled.

There's only like 11 smelters worldwide that handle coltan, and various industry groups have actually talked to those smelters to buy "conflict-free" minerals, which all have actually agreed too.

That's good, as no new conflict minerals are entering the system (at least without someone going rogue or conflict minerals with forged paperwork). However, a complete ban isn't possible because an increasing amount comes from recycling, and there's no paperwork anymore. If you want to ban conflict minerals, basically the entire recycling chain must be thrown away because it's impossible to differentiate and the only way is to assume the entire chain is contaminated.

Quite true. In fact, most people don't know that Europe started to mass-export their industry to North America in early 1800's, and literally built their society on the backs of children here. And they did so right up until the 1930's give or take a little bit. Though if you look further back, companies were exporting their industry as soon as people started landing here and started setting up shop. Hell, England was buying wagon wheels made in Canada, made by children, paid by levy in 1750.

Though let's not forget, it was this flagrant abuse that forced us. To say enough was enough, and ensure there were working standards, end child slaveshops and all the rest too. Though it went on for a long time before anything changed.

Though let's not forget, it was this flagrant abuse that forced us. To say enough was enough, and ensure there were working standards, end child slaveshops and all the rest too. Though it went on for a long time before anything changed.

Let's not forget to give the unions credit for ending the abusives labor practices of the last century.

Without continuously enforcing the labor laws we have, businesses would go back to their old ways in a heartbeatbecause there is always someone willing to take your place for longer hours and less pay.

That's something that's really, really scary in the IT industry right now. The industry is consolidating into huge companies, slowly but certainly. What's the next step ?

Well this is what car companies were doing around, say 1935 something around there. While that consolidation kept going, and car companies were growing, things were really, really good for their employees. Once the growth faltered, well we all know what happened.

Let's not forget that it's was the original unions that wanted cottage industries to continue, with the poor practices, the child labour and terrible conditions included - or do you conveniently forget about the acts of destruction gangs of workers carried out against new dangled technologies? The engines destroyed in shipping, the factories burned to the ground (to the point where in England factories started to be built with no flammable material in the structure at all), farming machines destroyed in the night (to the point where farmers were told that they should leave the machines out in the open at night, otherwise they would lose their barns and homes as well).

It wasn't just the Luddites in the 19th century that caused problems for those who chose not to join them. My grandfather, along with his brothers, owned a coal mine in Alabama that was effectively shut down by none other than John L. Lewis himself in 1949, in cooperation with other UMW members and the local sheriff. My family already paid more than the prevailing union wage at the time and refused to go along with the short 3-day work week that Lewis had been coordinating nationwide, so Lewis and his thugs showed up to teach them a lesson and started shooting into occupied vehicles and destroying equipment. More than a thousand shots were exchanged, and one of the union thugs died during the attack. Eventually, 13 of the union people were convicted and fined (note that the miner that shot and killed one of the attackers was never even charged), and 10 more (including Lewis) were nolle prossed.

Interesting that the UMW doesn't care to include that chapter in its history.

Most people who claim to 'care' tend to be from a very colonial mentality. It's the same mentality Europeans used to have in relation to their colonies.

Never is this more exemplified than in food production. I live in Ontario, Canada. Land of big labor unions. Do you know which group of workers are actually legally prohibited from unionization?

You betcha, the most vulnerable, at risk, exploited workers... farm workers.

Why do you suppose this is? Because it is in reality a very colonial attitude that farm workers should not be 'western' workers. That is for lesser beings.

Even in the 'glory' days of big union. Why is it that you think an auto-worker was earning 80K/year while farm workers struggled in the hot sun for hours on end providing the very food we eat?

Most societies have never been willing to pay the true cost of labor for its workers. At best, it makes laws that drive the hard jobs overseas or into migrant labor.

Even in the days of big union, they only focused on a few fields. The auto worker only felt well off because there was a poor non-unionized waitress ready to serve them. Or they could take a vacation and travel to a third world country and take advantage of their cheap labor. How many civilized good labor law Europeans travel to Asia or North Africa to take advantage of the cheap labor... (and cheap women).

This doesn't even get into the odd realm realm that going for the cheapest labor provides the most needy with the jobs they actually need. There were several studies that showed that when they banned child labor... for example in Bangladesh... it's not like this actually the kids... it just forced them into more poverty and increasingly prostitution. And cheap goods means other poor people can actually get those good cheaply as well.

Considering money at the end of the day is just us exchanging our own labor, it's typically very hard to really come up with the idea of a 'living wage'. Pay farm workers a living wage and the price of food jumps... and then you want a bigger living wage. Most of what we *need* is just buying labor for each other... typically from the poorest in society. Even things like housing... it's more about competing with your neighbor for the hot location.

Low-tech goods can still be found "made in the USA" (assuming you're in the USA, but probably true elsewhere). A Google, for example, turned up this site [americansworking.com] for shoes. There are lots of things where, if you're willing to pay more and take a more traditional approach (e.g., leather instead of high-tech fabrics), you can buy local. For example, it is easy to buy all your furniture from a local craftsman/woodworker - but the price will not even be remotely like what you'd find at Wal-mart.

On the other hand, for most if not all high-tech consumer goods, there simply is no other choice.

google probably searched on a pc with parts made in china, powered by electricity generated using parts made from china, in a house full of stuff made in china, paid for by a credit card made in china, etc.

the OP is a kook. if he really didn't want anything made by poor chinese slave labor, he'd have to kill himself, because in the "western" world, there isn't anything that doesn't feature something made by chinese slave labor somewhere in its lifecycle. maybe he'd prefer to buy shoes made by american sl

Whist the arn't any actual guidelines for "Made in the USA", the proposed guidelines where 75% of costs. This means if 3rd-world labor is a 10th the price, then only 23% of the work actually needs to be done in the USA. Even that 23% can be done in American Samoa under very diffrent labour laws.

There are lots of things where, if you're willing to pay more and take a more traditional approach (e.g., leather instead of high-tech fabrics), you can buy local. For example, it is easy to buy all your furniture from a local craftsman/woodworker - but the price will not even be remotely like what you'd find at Wal-mart.

Often the initial price will be higher, but the total cost of ownership is lower. My father has a set of bookshelves that he built himself when he was in his 20's. Now he is over 60 an

OK, so that rules out flying with anything powered by RR, or indeed a number of GE engines. Or on an Airbus. If you hang around with the seriously rich, you'll have to avoid a lot of their yachts. ARM is purely a design house, but I think you should avoid phones because they almost all have ARM-design cpus. I doubt you can afford an Aga, but you might manage a Rayburn. I assume you prefer NASCAR to all that F1 stuff.

I could go on. Burberry is a cheapo Chinese knockoff nowadays, but Barbour isn't. You can bu

So wait, you'd rather people in china go back to being subsistence farmers with a 44 year life expectancy (that was by the way, 1960), with no education, so you can feel good about giving extra money to your neighbour who's going to go out and spend more on lunch than someone in china would have made in a week? That's the argument against what is happening in china today.

China is in transition. There is a huge swath of people, basically 3 or 4 lost generations of people, and another 1 or 2 in the pipeline who are the transition from destitute subsistence farmers who literally never had anything, to a society of people who have little things like antibiotics, and electricity. Unfortunately, they're lost. They're not savable by any laws rules, treaties or procedures. Nothing. And there are hundreds of millions of them, which makes them worth next to nothing. A million workers at foxconn go on strike? No problem, shut down the facility and move somewhere else, and hire a million others, or let foxconn go out of business and someone else will emerge. Because they have generations of people who have nothing else they can do but repetitive manual labour. Chinas literacy rate in 1950 was 20% (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/news/12iht-rchina.t.html?pagewanted=all) Today it's still only about 88%.

Believe it or not, all these exploited workers in china are living the great dream. That their children and childrens children won't have to go through this. But they are condemned to lives of either being peasant farmers who could never read, write or get any actual health care, or being underpaid overworked factory workers. The only thing we can do for them is give them jobs, and we can only give them money based on the fact that they're basically doing the work of robots.

Remember, there are still 2.7 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day, and 1.1 billion on less than a dollar (worldwide). http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00282/over_world.htm . That's slightly out of date, but it conveys the point. Foxconn's wages are about 300 dollars a month, or about 10 dollars a day (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/global/08wages.html). Comparatively, people working at foxconn at 10 dollars a day, are doing *extremely* well compared to the lives they would have had 40 years earlier.

In the west we don't really think about the cost of basic things. Workers at foxconn have access to a diverse diet, which, by the way, is actually pretty tough to get on 2 dollars a day. They have generally clean water, again, not something they would have had as starving peasants. Oh, and they aren't starving. They, and their children will be able to read and write. They have electricity, which again, is a pretty radical concept.

The only way billions of *people* in the world are going to get out of illiterate starving and dying to preventable diseases, is if we give them jobs, preferably for honest work. That might be making your shoes, and that might be snapping together an iPod. But you can't just go and pay someone in china 10 dollars and hour for a job someone else will do for 2, it's has devastating cascading effect through society, and frankly, for 10 dollars an hour, it would be cheaper to pay a robot than a foxconn worker. They're better to get the 2 dollars an hour or 1.25 or whatever it is, than to get nothing. Because without money they can't build anything to improve their society with, which is why they (along with a lot of other places) are so far behind, and that china has realized this is why they're growing at a break neck rate and fixing it.

As a grad student, I make about 20k a year (I'm sort of half game developer half grad student, but one is part of the other). I am, by canadian measures barely above the poverty line once you take out my tuition. That's still more money in 1 year that about half the people in the world will make in their lifetimes.

Yes, china has unfair currency practices which (significantly) undervalue their currency, and

Wait, so you're saying we should treat China as a charity case? Really? Perhaps you're not aware of China's government and their ridiculously massive military budget. Do you really want to keep feeding that beast? How long until they stop trading with other countries for raw materials (minerals and food alike) and just march in and take them?

You do realise that no matter what country you invest in there's always dozens of others that miss out - the opportunity cost. Do you worry about the impoverished

As a person of indian decent I have a soft spot for india, who are about 15 years behind china.

Chinas military budget is about 200 billion USD. The US military budget is about 800 billion. And china is spreading that around 4x as many people. Admittedly, it buys a lot more in china, but as even Clausewitz realized, money in absolute terms buys you a better military. Besides, china needs to defend itself from Russia, the US, India, internal muslim extremists, and just generally have a military, so they c

Workers at foxconn have access to a diverse diet, which, by the way, is actually pretty tough to get on 2 dollars a day.

More Americans understand this than you think. The 44 million or so of us who are on food stamps - I was one of them - try to live on anywhere from $3-6 a day for food. Just check out some of the various Hunger Challenges [democracyinaction.org] out there on the Internets.

I'm old enough to remember seeing Chairman Mao on the nightly news. China transitioned to an economic super-power a long time ago. But yes, China has dragged more people out of abject poverty in the last 50yrs than the rest of the world combined, but it has done so simply by repairing the self-inflicted damage of Mao's cultural revolution.

No matter how many times you call it exploitation, that doesn't make it so. These people want a better life, which is why they work in factories. Just like Americans did. Just like the English did. Just like the Germans did. Just like the French did. Just like the Japanese did. Just like the Taiwanese did. Just like the Australians did. Just like the Canadians did.

You are filthy rich in comparison to the rest of the world, but you are so spoiled that you don't even know it. The Chinese people cannot have your life until their country is comparatively rich. Their country cannot become comparatively rich until the majority of the population is involved in wealth creation. Thats a straight up fact and no matter how many times you claim bullshit like "exploitation", you cannot change the facts.

Yes, we all understand that you feel so strongly for the plight of others that you feel the need to say something, *anything*, as some sort of make-you-feel-good-inside moral protest. Your problem is that your thinking is so shallow that all you are doing is appealing to emotion. There is no logic in your protest. There are no facts in your protest. Its just a protest for protests sake, and for that you should be ashamed of yourself. How shallow, petty, and spoiled you are.

There is nothing wrong with appealing to emotion in the face of the kind of unfeeling, self-serving rationalization that passes off human suffering as progress.

Yes, there is cheap labor to be had in China. And yes, both sides in the trade can benefit from that imbalance. You'll get no argument from me there. We get cheap products, they grow their economy. Everybody wins.

But what we are seeing is not mutual capitalization of this economic imbalance. If it was, Chinese factory workers would be working ~8 hour days and earning the local equivalent of a living wage. What we ARE seeing some of the most profitable corporations in history writing off human and environmental damage on a massive scale as externalities.

But thanks for the emotionally manipulative ad hominem attacks. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Um... they tried the sci fi solutions of wonderful fantasy land and 30 million people starved to death under mao.

It's not charity. We do that to africa and we simply exacerbate the problem. If you just give people aid you drive prices down and make it hard for them to compete (I mean general aid, not specific disaster relief). It's giving them a fair chance. And it's not some divine paper, in fact I was quite clear on what they're getting in exchange. Clean water, electricity, food, housing that isn't dirt and logs, and eventually, stuff.

There really is no other way. We can't just give them money, and while we can give them some of the 'stuff' (power generators for example), they need to be able to pay for their use, have staff to be paid to run them, we can't possible match the scale required.

I'm not sure what dream you're talking about. As a kid (and even now as an adult) I want stuff. A house, a car, computer, food, clothes. I want to be able to retire eventually. I'm only going to get those things by exchanging my labour for them, and we use money as a unit of exchange between the two. It's not that complicated a concept, and it provides the granularity '3 chickens and rack of ribs for my vaccinations' lacks. I'm going to guess that people in china may want slightly different stuff, or they set the bar lower than 'a car' and maybe on clean drinking water. But that's how the world works.

I said, and it is depressing, there are generations (or at least major portions of generations) of people in china who basically lack the skills to do anything else. In 1980 1 in 5 people in china couldn't read or write. Consider that in north america something like 70% of people have a post secondary education of somesort, and in china you have 20% of people who didn't manage to get to grade 2 or equivalent. They *need* to be able to educate their children (and they are, and have done that), but they have millions of people who are a long way from being able to do anything in a 'knowledge economy'. They are also about 30 years away from having a workforce that is effectively 100% literate (which is the literacy rate for under 24's now), and as that shifts they will be able to do more and more. But right now, for some people, manual labour is as good as it gets.

Is it really that misguided? I wanted to mod you down, but on second thought your comment really is insightful... I just don't agree with it.

If it really bothers the poster that much, simply go without the toy.

What kind of logic is that? That goes in the same bucket as "If you don't like how it is, make it yourself"... It's also like saying if you are bothered by how animals are handled by *some* producers, why don't you become vegetarian.With food, just like with electronics devices, there are ways to consume while reducing your negative footprint. With food, it gets always easier to do so - no so much with electronics.

...simply go without the toy.

Toys, really? I don't know how you live or what you do for a living, but there is no way I could work or live in 2012 without consuming electronic products.

But it the end, I think what will happen here is the same thing as with what happens when people try to consume animals products only coming from animals treated in the best conditions... most are not ready to pay the price.

apparently it's not so much the minimal labor wages that make China attractive to manufacturing, but the supply of trained engineers to manage the operation. Apple alone needs hundreds of engineers to supervise the thousands of workers.

we offer a full line of consumer and professional electronics, athletic apparel, and soy products, all officially certified by the retchdog institute for unicorns and sunshine to be completely free of whatever it is you find objectionable. our modest markup of 1200% is necessary to ensure that only the finest managers, assistant managers, and assistants to assistant managers are hired from a competitive field of my friends and extended family.

There's no such thing.
Corporations aren't in the business of creating products in an ethical manner. They're in the business of making money by using the cheapest parts and labor possible..
If they could employ slaves, and get away with it, they would.

Firstly, the people within Corporations could stop acting like frakking arseholes all the time, and have some principles. And no, I don't care about the principles of capitalism, the people in charge absolutely can and should be blamed for being amoral bastards.

Secondly, and we already see this in some arenas, consumers can start spending their money only with corporations they consider ethically sound. The effect of this would be that in order to slavishly follow the maximum

Corporations are in the business of making money... and they have long realised one way of doing that was betting on upper-middle-class consumer guilt to pay a premium in exchange for some sort of vaguely-enforced "ethical business" seal-of-approval. It's a niche market, but a market nonetheless.

Just look at Whole Foods' CEO [wikipedia.org]: not exactly the hippy-dippy type, just a guy who realised there was a market to tap, and tap he did. Call it cynical (it definitely is), but some corporations will behave ethically, just as long as they can make a profit out of it.

Sweat shops and outsourcing are driven by consumer preferences. Namely the consumer's preference for the absolute lowest price regardless of all other considerations. It is a classic tragedy of the commons situation.

Corporate greed does *not* inevitably lead to sweat shops and outsourcing. Of primary importance to corporations are sales, and sales are determined by consumers. Outsourcing and sweat shops are only possible if there is consumer indifference, if employing such methods will offend customers and result in lost sales then the "greed" motivation says do not employ such methods.

Corporate greed actually inevitably leads to satisfying consume demands at the lowest possible cost *and* consistent with consumer expectations. Consumers are actually in control of the methods employed by corporations.

The ICs are still almost entirely made in the third world. Even when the dies are made somewhere with standards, they're usually packaged somewhere poorer.

But then you can go further. Some poor bastard mined the tin and copper for the leads. Another processed the ore to raw metal, another stamped the sheet metal. Someone made chemicals for processing the ore, and making the epoxy. Someone trucked that stuff to the packaging facility. Chances are most of those people were working in pretty shitty conditions

Money talks, and we're all guilty in this rat race to the bottom for the lowest cost. When robotics and automation get good enough, even Foxconn exploited workers will be out of work. We're in the middle of a transition to full or almost fully robotic manufacturing, give it a few years, no one will have a job expect robot builders and service men to maintain them.

When all the manufacturing etc is done by robots - surely the entire capitalist system will crash. The inherent nature of capitalism is to have a triangle - the wide base with people doing low paid jobs, the people who go to university and get a good education to get well paid jobs in the middle, and the 1%ers at the top.

If you start messing with that triangle, won't the whole thing collapse?

university does not = job skills tech needs apprenticeship for lot's of IT jobs and not just CS. No we need more tech school. Lot's of people are going to university not learning what they need to do a job and end up working at McDonalds or walmart with big loans to pay back.

When technological changes occur faster in an economy than social changes you end up with massive social disorder. That was the whole issue with the Luddites. Their way of life was being changed by new technology faster than the social structures were changing. People reacted violently. In time social structures and people's views caught up with where the economy had moved and things settled down into a new pattern for a while. We may be due for another rough transition.

No, the triangle works against the free market by consolidating power into the hands of a few people who are then able to control the market. In reality the free market would work better if everyone were on a more equal footing, since it requires people have the ability to negotiate a fair price for themselves. Not that I believe that will happen, but it's important to understand that the people who oppose that are actually opposing the free market.

There isn't some magic limited quality of labor that needs to be done, and once we replace all of that with robots, there'll be no work left for people to do any more. That fallacy has existed for hundreds of years. It never quite seems to happen, yet people persist with the belief.

Couple hundred years ago, it was cotton weaving - see, hundreds of thousands of people used to work weaving cotton, then machines got invented that could perform the job much more efficiently. Surely this would result in there not being enough work for all those people! oh no!

Well, in a very short timeframe that can happen, but over the long run it just doesn't work out that way. Why? We just keep inventing more work to do. There's no objective definition of 'work'. It's whatever you can get paid to do. Back in the age of manual cotton weaving, for instance, almost no-one made a living in the 'creative industries', which barely existed. Nowadays, tens of thousands of people make a good wage producing utterly unnecessary and frivolous TV shows. The key point is _there's a direct link between the two things_. Automate things that at present take hundreds of thousands of humans to do, and those hundreds of thousands of humans won't - over the long run - starve to death. We'll invent new stuff for them to do. That 'stuff' is frequently frivolous and entirely unnecessary - like television, or advertising, or professional sports, or pet grooming, or personal shopping...the reason all those ridiculous 'jobs' exist is _precisely_ because we've got so good at making the really essential tasks - farming, construction, health care, clothes manufacture, resource extraction, power generation etc - happen very efficiently that, once all of the above tasks are done for everyone in a reasonably developed country, there's still a *massive* potential labor surplus. Via the magic of the free market economy, instead of rationing all the essential labor and the results of that labor out equally so everyone works 5 hours a week and we all live a comfortable life by the standards of 1850, we instead invented a bewildering array of utterly unnecessary 'work' so most people can continue to 'work' 40 hours a week, and be rewarded with the opportunity to buy a crystal-encrufted cellphone, buy a shirt for their dog, and watch 2.5 Men on an HDTV. Ain't humanity great?

This process can continue more or less indefinitely if we want it to. I see no particular limit to human ingenuity in inventing ridiculous new spheres of activity.

Uh huh. Have you ever wondered why the majority of people in North America (and not a small majority) work in the service industry, and only work 40 or so hours a week, when their ancestors had to work more or less constantly at food production just to eat?

Increased mechanization means only that we'll work less and/or more of us will do luxury or useless jobs.

This is about as useful as asking who doesn't rely on semi-slave labor practices during the industrialization phase of the UK or US (no vacations, Pinkerton detective agency, strikebreaking, pittance wages, etc.).

Look, this phase is messy, but necessary.

They can't just start out with a "services" economy all styling each others' hair.

They have to go through this phase, and it's certainly a step up from the near-starvation they had in the countryside. Then wages go up, slowly, but surely. Before you know it, Chinese will be asking about organic certification before they deign to go to work for a company.

etc etc etc. there are ways to produce goods without any of these things. the most productive nation on earth in the 20th century was the united states, and it was largely unionized labor with labor rights and relatively high wages. the only people who think 'slavery = prodcutivity' are people w

He's not suggesting that it is necessary from a manufacturing point of view.
He's claiming it is a necessary stage from a developmental point of view, ie that there is no other (or at least no better) way of transitioning from a largely pre-industrial/agrarian society.

What are China's other options? It is tempting to view this from a western perspective and see it as some sort of "race to the bottom". From a chinese perspective that wouldn't be the case as they are seeing massive reductions in poverty.

Nope. Japan was a controlled experiment. As part of the post-WW2 reconstruction the US assisted Japan's rebuilding and modernization of its industry and opened US markets to Japan as a form of economic support. Japan was subsidized and externally managed to a degree.

Fair labor practices are not something that takes care of itself via an Invisible Hand, be it that of Capitalism or of God. So long as the playing field tells the players that they can outsource slave labor, or even just significantly unfair labor (folks with nothing like 1st ammendment rights), then all players that chose not to do so will quickly lose and cease to exist. The only way to solve the problem (that I'm thinking of right now in full on rhetoric mode) is to have better national standards of who we do business with in the global international trade community. Put standards in place, and make it profitable for international actors to meet the improved standards. But as can be evidenced by opening your eyes in the morning and looking at the world, there will be a lot of political pressure against that path. But hopefully one day the incessant light - fueled by real freedom of speech and the press- shining on exploitive employers/slavers, will cause things to move in the right direction. I hope.

"Fair labor practices are not something that takes care of itself via an Invisible Hand, be it that of Capitalism or of God."

Yes, actually, they do improve as a result of market conditions (the so-called invisible hand), when employers have to compete for workers in the marketplace. When there is a glut of labor applying for a few factory jobs, then yes, wages will be low and conditions will be poor. But then more manufacturers will build factories to take advantage of that cheap labor and the supply/demand situation will shift in favor of the workers.That is exactly what the "invisible hand" is about.

I mentioned Invisible Hand, because, yes, I am versed in the theory, though some of the more important writings I may have most recently read 20 years ago in college. Without much certainty, I suspect that if I reviewed the classic texts, that I'd find most express what you expressed, though squarely in the realm where the various actors you mention, are all playing on a level capitalistic/legal field. When you start talking about international trade with key players that still call themselves communist,

... The only way to solve the problem (that I'm thinking of right now in full on rhetoric mode) is to have better national standards of who we do business with in the global international trade community. Put standards in place, and make it profitable for international actors to meet the improved standards. But as can be evidenced by opening your eyes in the morning and looking at the world, there will be a lot of political pressure against that path...

Yes and no. Your logic is flawed because it is government based, based on political pressure. The true solution is to have a consumer based solution, to leverage corporate greed. To have consumers make conscious decisions to pick products more inline with their ideals rather than whatever has the lowest price tag. Corporate greed seeks sales not lowest cost production. Low cost production does no good if consumers reject your products to do your production methods.

I work in China. It is worth noting that some of the conditions at Foxconn, while terrible by Western standards, are normal here.

A Chinese friend worked as a waitress. She thought $400 a month (in a culture where there are no tips) was excellent money. Most meals and a bunk in a shared apartment provided. No heat, at a latitude where frost is moderately common.

In at 9 am to do cleaning, work until after lunch, sleep in the afternoon, start again at 4:30 and work until closing which was usually about 11 but if customers wanted to stay later, some waitresses would have to stay until 2 or 3. No extra money for that. She got two days a month off, and thought that was generous, but a "day off" meant coming in at 4:30 instead of in the morning.

They are opening a new plant in a less prosperous area. Salaries are going up as a result.http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90860/7122397.html(People's Daily is a Party organ, some skepticism is required)

And there are long queues for the jobs:http://www.itproportal.com/2012/02/01/despite-hash-conditions-thousands-line-up-to-get-a-job-at-foxconn/

Most meals and a bunk in a shared apartment provided. No heat, at a latitude where frost is moderately common.

I'm not asking to be modded down and i'm not trying to be all Monty Python but... if these bunks are arranged really spaciously they might need heating - depends on the latitude. If they're arranged anything like the standard for employee accommodation then body heat will take care of it. So which to choose? Just how bad is it?

Let's hear some balanced accounts of conditions in these places. As you said, your friend thought this was a decent job.

She thought $400 a month (in a culture where there are no tips) was excellent money.

I don't know why people always quote things in dollars-per-month. That is meaningless. When I was in Russia in the late 90s, bus fare was less than 5 cents in the city I was in. At the same time it was $2 in the U.S. I took a family of 8 out to dinner with four courses, vodka, champagne, the works - $25. That would have been $200 in the U.S. Of course, the head of household was only making $300/month - but what did his $300 equate to? Hard to say, given the difference in socialization, piracy, etc.

I work in Japan and am making twice the money I made last time I worked in Europe, but a disproportionally large part of it goes down the drain for housing and food. I am not buying any more or less gadgets at the end than I did back then, even though I live in roughly the same conditions (arguably worse housing actually) and get more money.

I have this hookup in Napa Valley which supplies me with free-range electronics. It comes from a commune where they manufacture phones and laptops using sustainable, cruelty-free paleo techniques. Their R&D division is an ayuhuasca hut.

on an airline.
As a country we aren't willing to pay extra for good service on an airline - it is all about who has the lowest fair on expedia/priceline/... not which brand has good customer service. As a country we are not willing to pay for extras like good customer service, quality, or good business practices. Anyone old enough when the big selling point of walmart was "Made in America"? It was great - walmart was great - jobs were great... Then it was time to lower prices - either by breaking the lab

If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese feel the same way about air travel. They only want to spend as little as possible. This known fact is backed up by a little known domestic airline inside China called SSS. It's the largest and fastest growing. I've taken several flights. You get a single bottle of water and all meals are bought on the plane. Halfway through the flight, the flight attendants will walk down the isle with a cart advertising all sorts of crap to sell. As an American, I find that to b

There are UL, CSA and CE marks which go on equipment which convey "This product was tested and found to be reasonably safe". There could also be a mark which goes in the product documentation and on the nameplate which is recognisable by consumers who are concerned about exploitation of workers. The safety marks require bi-annual inspections of the factory and also the submission of objective evidence that the product was manufactured with all the safety critical components in place. The same thing could be

Problem with this is - I see the CE mark on many devices that (yes, [citation needed]) I'm almost entirely sure have not been tested, and don't qualify for CE/TuV/UL/etc. Random worthless electronics from china on ebay, for example.

If I want to buy a new tech gadget, from whom can I buy it without ethical qualms?"

I'd love to hear from some of these workers before deciding what those ethical qualms are. I'm all for helping them out, but it'd be nice for them to ask. Afterall, we don't want to cause them to lose their jobs.

They're probably the last bastion of American computer assembly - I believe you can actually get an option code that certifies that an IBM POWER machine is made in the US of US components, even, intended for national security applications.

It wasn't all that long ago that the worlds manufacturing floor for PC components was Taiwan rather than mainland China. Anyone care to contrast the current working conditions in China to those in Taiwan 10 years ago?

Working conditions in Taiwan 10 or 15 years ago were much better than China today IMHO. In 1997, the Taiwanese had already had their first truly democratic elections, working conditions were tolerable mostly everywhere, there was already a national medical insurance plan and some social security in place, there were rather strict labor safety laws, environment pollution laws, etc.

Depending on your standard there is probably none. I have spent a lot of time in China over the last couple of years and have visited quite a few factories. The working conditions vary of course but general the higher quality the product the better the factory is made in. I guess the attention to details that make a better product are also more like to make a better work environment. The quality of our product is our reputation which is why we now have our own factory built to first world standards. We

That doesn't excuse it. If slavery is required to make cell phones at a reasonable price then we'll have to do without."I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process." -- Benjamin Harrison 23rd President

Okay, there on the left is Manuel. There on the right is Palmer. They will work for you as hard as you want them to, and nobody can accuse you of being a slave driver.
That said, I think that a large fraction of customers, given the choice, would not buy slavery tainted products. That is one thing that has held me back on the more expensive Raspberry PI: the concern that Chinese manufacture may be tainted.
But typically speaking, it is the profit maximizing stores that eliminate your options.

Oh, and before someone accuses me of rationalizing to justify my toys, I don't need to since I can't afford them anyway. I have a used Nokia and a cheap laptop - no iPhone, Android, tablet, kindle or console.

Yes, crappy jobs are better than no jobs at all. You know what's better still? A decent job, with fair pay and reasonable conditions.

If we refuse to buy phones and such from companies that run mandatory twelve hour shifts and force college students to "intern" doing manual labor for a pittance, that doesn't mean that all those jobs will come back to the US. It means that companies like Foxconn will be forced to pay better wages, shorten shifts, and generally treat their employees better. Shorter shifts

There's also a difference between shutting down and finding the sales prospects - as prices go up, fewer people can buy - make that line of business unattractive to the point where they get out of it. Consolidation, monopoloy...

It shows that Chinese labor costs only make up about 2% of the cost of the iPad. We could triple their salaries and have prices rise by only around 5%. Obviously it would vary by device, but no way would it be 50%.

Yes, triple their wages, causing massive inflation in China making the poor in China even worse off. You cannot dump wealth into an economy like that. The Russians tried it after the fall of the Soviey unionand the result was so disasterous that they've ended up with an oligarchy and had to be grateful that a few people sucked up all the money because the economy was a mess.

I'm a Russian who grew up during early 90s, when economic reforms happened. I can assure you that "triple their wages" was not involved, nor was "dumping wealth into an economy".

The reason why we ended up with an oligarchy is because we rushed to privatize as much of state property as we could, so that the magical "invisible hand' would do its work and bring us all prosperity. Turned out that when you just sell stuff to highest bidder, with few checks, and rampant corruption, it ends up mostly in the hands

You don't need unlimited time or money, you need to be well organized, know your needs precisely and be willing to learn and work hard.

I run a small artisan bakery, and I not only build the shop from scratch, but I have also made all the equipment I need myself - including mixers, a rather hi-tech production line including a kneeder, dough laminator, rather complex dough proofer, shaper with corresponding loaders. I myself manage to produce about 500-600 items for about half a day, most of it long-rise bread. My ovens even report stuff on Twitter for my customers.

Not only is everything DIY (including the cast aluminium boxes for the electronics), it is also cheaper than any alternative with similar capabilities and capacity I've been able to source. And it was all made in my backyard, with hand tools from recycled materials over a year, including the learning. I had never touched a shovel, a saw, a router, a milling machine or a soldering iron before that.

If you want, you can do it, the problem is everyone wants to be a manager, and nobody wants to do the hard work.

Really? Britain's economy is in worse shape than any other European country?

Britain has the lowest unemployment rate in the EU, and a GDP per capita higher than the majority of EU countries.Britain still has a AAA rating on its sovereign debt, France is about to be downgraded, and let's not talk about Italy or even Greece.Manufacturing output of Britain increased last year despite a recession in the rest of the economy.Britain is having to bale out other EU countries like Ireland. Nobody is having to bale o